It's been an age since I've read Tolkein's "The Two Towers" and I don't have a copy handy, but I can distinctly remember Gandalf's prediction of the Scouring of the Shire being something along the lines of - and here I'm paraphrasing - "he'll still get up to some pathetic spiteful displays of trifling ass shit, but this heifer's days as a final boss villain are over."

(10-24-2019, 04:50 PM)Reasor Wrote: It's been an age since I've read Tolkein's "The Two Towers" and I don't have a copy handy, but I can distinctly remember Gandalf's prediction of the Scouring of the Shire being something along the lines of - and here I'm paraphrasing - "he'll still get up to some pathetic spiteful displays of trifling ass shit, but this heifer's days as a final boss villain are over."

I've a copy to hand, and that's bang on, word for word.

I've no idea where it is in the books, but there's a bit where Gandalf hypothesises the immortal Sauron's post-ring fate - something along the lines of 'an impotent spirit of malice which gnaws itself in the shadows', which sounds like a good timeline's version of Trump post impeachment/election loss.

Quote:Jose Segovia-Benitez, a 38-year-old Marine Corps combat veteran who served in Iraq, was deported to El Salvador — a country where he hasn’t lived since he was a toddler — on Wednesday.

Segovia-Benitez's attorney Roy Petty told the Phoenix New Times that he didn’t find out Segovia-Benitez had been deported until after he arrived for a planned meeting with his client at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Arizona where he was being held.

"Certainly, this is a surprise," he told the paper Wednesday. "ICE kept his deportation a secret. They kept it a secret from him, me, his other attorney, and they kept it a secret from his mother. It's not common practice."

“Generally, what ICE will do is they will notify the person so the person can make arrangements. They woke him up and put him on a plane,” he continued.

An ICE spokeswoman confirmed Segovia-Benitez’s deportation in a statement to The Hill on Wednesday.

“Mr. Segovia-Benitez was removed to his home country Oct. 23 in accordance with federal law and the policies and procedures of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” she said.

Quote:Jose Segovia-Benitez, a 38-year-old Marine Corps combat veteran who served in Iraq, was deported to El Salvador — a country where he hasn’t lived since he was a toddler — on Wednesday.

Segovia-Benitez's attorney Roy Petty told the Phoenix New Times that he didn’t find out Segovia-Benitez had been deported until after he arrived for a planned meeting with his client at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Arizona where he was being held.

"Certainly, this is a surprise," he told the paper Wednesday. "ICE kept his deportation a secret. They kept it a secret from him, me, his other attorney, and they kept it a secret from his mother. It's not common practice."

“Generally, what ICE will do is they will notify the person so the person can make arrangements. They woke him up and put him on a plane,” he continued.

An ICE spokeswoman confirmed Segovia-Benitez’s deportation in a statement to The Hill on Wednesday.

“Mr. Segovia-Benitez was removed to his home country Oct. 23 in accordance with federal law and the policies and procedures of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” she said.

This is fucking insane.

"These guys are pros, Michael. They're gonna push the tension 'till the last possible moment before they strip."

(10-24-2019, 11:39 AM)fraid uh noman Wrote: It's fake news and Italy is lying. That's all they ever have to say. Fake news! Anything negative about Trump is totally fabricated by the evil Democrats and Liberals!

And besides, Italy didn't help us in WWII!!!

Seriously, when Trump said this about the Kurds not really helping us, all I could think of was back in 90s when I use to listen to Howard Stern. This is totally something that he would have said. Our country is being run by a washed up shock jock....

Re. that veteran who was deported. I certainly hope that he didn't vote for Trump. Because if he did, then I can't feel sorry for him when he said he would do this during the fucking campaign. This goes for anyone in the military that voted for him, then he turns around and treats veterans the way he does.....

The Justice Department is said to have opened a criminal inquiry into its own Russia investigation, a move likely to open Barr to accusations that he is trying to deliver a political victory for Trump:

(10-24-2019, 08:46 PM)Iron Maiden Wrote: The Justice Department is said to have opened a criminal inquiry into its own Russia investigation, a move likely to open Barr to accusations that he is trying to deliver a political victory for Trump:

Quote:Barr was always this guy. His legacy was being this guy. He got confirmed because a bunch of pauncey DC insiders loudly told the country he was some kind of institutionalist with a nice reputation. They did immeasurable fucking damage.

This inquiry over debunked conspiracies should be a shocking moment, but nothing is shocking anymore.

Still, taxpayer money will be used to try to press charges against people for conspiratorial reasons, so the president can pretend that Russia didn't do anything in 2016.

Quote:Criminal misconduct by US border officers has reached a five-year high, according to an internal US government report obtained exclusively by Quartz. The offenses range from fraud to capital murder.

The 68-page document covers disciplinary actions within US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the US Border Patrol for the federal government’s 2018 fiscal year, which ended Oct. 1, 2019. The unredacted data provides the most comprehensive look yet at the agency’s disciplinary apparatus.

The number of arrests of CBP officers and Border Patrol agents, according to the report, had been on a half-decade decline before leaping 11% between fiscal years 2017 and 2018. (Arrests of officers and agents increased annually starting in 2007 and hit a high of 348 in 2012 before going down again.)

“[A]n unacceptable number of CBP employees are arrested each year for violating federal, state, or local law,” the report says. Of 268 CBP employees arrested in fiscal 2018, 11 were arrested twice; one was arrested four times; and one was arrested five times, resulting in a total of 286 arrests.

43 liars who just want all the good times that come from accusing a powerful man of sexual assaulting them, right?!?

We talk about all the reasons why we ended up with President Dildo, but probably the biggest one is that our culture protected men who committed acts of violence against women. Pumpkins not only shouldn't have been elected, he shouldn't have been eligible after his 30-year prison term.

"Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos says that she has documents supporting claims that Trump attacked her in a hotel room in 2007. Zervos told a court about calendar entries, old emails, correspondence with Fox News and a polygraph test:

Quote:For the first time, season-five Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos has laid out some of her evidence supporting claims that Donald Trump attacked her in a hotel room in 2007.

Zervos is suing Trump for allegedly defaming her by denying a sexual assault. During the last presidential election, as Trump was under fire for boasting to Access Hollywood's Billy Bush about grabbing women's genitals, Zervos was one of many women to come forward to accuse him of repeatedly touching her, groping her and kissing her against her will. "I never met her at a hotel," responded Trump, who added that allegations from his accusers were "100 percent fabricated and made-up charges, pushed strongly by the media and the Clinton campaign."

Trump couldn't prevent the lawsuit from moving forward. In response to the argument that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution barred a sitting president from being sued in state court, the judge responded that "no one is above the law."

Now the case is headed to the home stretch and perhaps a trial right in the midst of the 2020 election. The judge has also ordered parties involved in the case to undergo deposition by Dec. 6. At a hearing earlier in the week, Trump was directed to provide four potential dates for his deposition.

While discovery is a couple months away from finishing, there are some interim disputes.

According to court papers filed Thursday, the Trump Organization is attempting to designate nine pages of documents as "confidential" because they contain Trump's former cellphone number. Zervos' lawyers respond that this is "absurd" and that Trump has already publicized his former cellphone to millions of Twitter followers during the 2016 campaign.

Here's the crux:

Quote:The biggest bombshells from Thursday's filing have to do with the evidence that Zervos says she has collected to "corroborate" her account of a meeting with Trump during the time in question and a sexual assault.

Those include emails to Trump's secretary Rhona Graff to set up a meeting with him and responses from her. There are also calendar entries for Trump and his bodyguard showing how they flew from Las Vegas to Los Angeles in December 2007 and stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Many of these documents are from Trump Organization files. Zervos' attorney Mariann Wang writes calendar entries and itineraries "line up with Ms. Zervos’s detailed public account with striking accuracy."

Further documents are said to also corroborate Zervos' account "with even more granularity," but for the time being, information about what is in those documents is redacted. Given the instant controversy about the secrecy of Trump's cellphone number, they could very well contain phone records.

These documents, Zervos contends, are what the Trump Organization is now attempting to keep secret by misusing confidentiality designations. Her motion is in support of de-designation of these documents. If she succeeds, she will be able to make them public in time for a summary judgment briefing now scheduled for March.

Additionally, Zervos is laying out more evidence that she contends shows she came forward to complain about Trump's behavior well before the Access Hollywood outtake scandal.

"Plaintiff reported Defendant’s assaults to family members and close friends immediately after they occurred and then again over the years," states a memorandum. "She confronted Defendant about his inappropriate behavior, both in a phone call shortly after the assaults and in an email sent through his secretary Rhona Graff in April 2016. Plaintiff also considered taking more formal legal action with respect to Defendant many years ago and in fact reached out to multiple lawyers back in 2011, including to Gloria Allred, whose records reflect that contact."

There's more.

"Plaintiff also contacted Fox News in August 2015 and reported that Defendant had 'invited me to a hotel room under the guise of working for him' but had instead acted inappropriately toward her," continues the memorandum. "The fact that Plaintiff sought legal counsel in 2011 and spoke about this to others including a news organization — years before the events of 2016 at issue in this case — strongly supports the inference that her core narrative is true."

Zervos has also submitted a polygraph test that she says provides supporting evidence in the form of an examiner vouching for her honesty.

Additionally, Zervos has located photographs of a hard copy New York Times edition that contained an article about mortgages. She says it's "the very hard copy that Defendant gave her in December 2007 when he told her that she should default on her mortgage because defaulting on debt obligations was central to his business model."